21 January 2010

I try to reflect this to my country where something is quite wrong (not working properly) with its OSS movement. Namely IGOS, a popular distro of indonesian Linux. The distro mainly target Internet Cafe by using its own somewhat "not user friendly" billing application that have been endorsed quite loudly by many activists. But where is migration?

Personally I never took IT/similar education in my life so my guess might be inaccurate. But I see this as the cause of self centered Linux userbase that flourished in IT institutions. They are thinking: just because they felt comfortable with Linux, so should the rest of people. The truth is: majority people didn't/not need to care about Linux's strength, thats particularly true for Indonesia where user just want their job get done. So what they need is kicking ass productivity software that works and reliable. I have tried many free OS as much as those IT guys (I think) and mostly what I do is comparing files inside etc folder across FreeBSD 4.8, some GnuLinux and QNX4 inside shell years ago. And I practically do nothing of creative work.

16 January 2010

Till now I still on Windows XP 32 with a lot of happiness. I still kicking on Sketchup for daily use and OSS for the rest, though I will get Win7 anyway once I buy a new netbook. What I missed then if I stayed on this venerable OS?

Win7: Easier to use and more organized. This seems the main mantra in Se7en, every user will agree including me. But don't misunderstand the meaning, it didn't mean to be faster.

Years of XP usage did give me a lot of understanding in XP's internal that remain the same as in 7. Some are:
We are still dealing with registry
There is Run command box (though hidden)
There is cmd box too
Same directory structure (there is some junction that handle compatibility if you don't know already)

11 January 2010

After given review to Chrome OS, I read more that Google use clutter in some of its window manager part. Generally google always carefully choose open source component in their projects, I guess clutter is no exception. Previously, I just heard a bit about clutter from cairo website so why don't give it a try! I'm so pleased by the demos, the script is clean and the animation is smooth and sleek. Clutter and PyClutter is like GTKGLExt and PyGtkGlExt, but more general purpose (I think) with expanded animation capabilities (no wonder goggle choose it). It could use cairo too in some operation.

Overall, Clutter is one of the best OpenGL framework with python binding (the other is PyGame2) that do more than most available libraries. With good documentation this should appealing for many developer, though few project that seems use them. I wonder where do clutter implemented outside Chrome OS, from goggle I just get moblin (mobile linux) that sounds popular. Given me impression that Clutter will be more spread in embedded platform (using OpenGLES).

10 January 2010

Last time I read a computer magazine (I rarely read them), most headline was musing around chrome os. What the heck? All I know about chrome is it's a chromium based browser, and if there is an OS born , it must be web/browser based. Yet the buzz is louder than before, that keep me thinking if Chrome OS was really a brand-new OS. Man thats blazing fast! if that's true

After read here, OK I'm wrong but still IMO it looks less than what Apple have done with their first Mac OS X. The difference is that OSX use (more secure) FreeBSD while Chrome OS use Linux. Oh and Apple still do lot more work on GUI. But of course, Chrome OS could make better Window Manager than currently Linux has.

OpenSource matter
Fine. Count me on it, but more or less could we get only the window manager and newly-ported chromium browser as paskage? and install it on dozen of different Linux distro that optimized for speed and older hardware? Now is that the buzz of the new OS?

Comparing it with Windows
Cloud computing is a different story than desktop computing (Yes, It's still alive, kicking and unreplaceable in many case) and I'm sure M$ or other browser/desktop apps vendor has their own answer for cloud. But replacing Windows with Chrome OS is major buzz that hyperventilating. No no, again the answer is not came from Google but from heavy desktop apps vendor like Adobe, Autodesk etc. Unless Google make SketchUp for Linux (have they even do their own homework? Jeez), Autodesk port Max & AutoCAD, Adobe take more serious on Flex and so on, IMO it's an ignorant buzz. It just similar to Linux++ vs Windows

02 January 2010

In a packager view, current Gimp installer has interesting drawback of its installation method. That is installer put two absolute path during setup:
default.env : Path=C:\Program Files\Gimp-2.0\bin
pygimp.interp : python=c:\python25\pythonw.exe

So why static absolute path is bad? Because nothing can't automatically fix/update it when gimp folder moved (unless you reinstall it of course).. and will render all plugins unusable which also meaning make file association harder. Moved? Yes this post lead to portable thingy. Which currently put my combo gimpscape installer in pending state >,<

Note that "program files" might be taken from %PROGRAMFILES% of system variable. In most case, modern windows application heavily rely path configuration to registry -said, it's faster to initiliaze- but we know that OSS programs especially those ported from linux didn't rely on registry by default.